Go, Read: Andrew Hickey On 10 Years Since Cerebus' Conclusion
Andrew Hickey writes about it being ten years since Dave Sim concluded his Cerebus series. I was not doing a lot of work in proximity to comics at the time, so that concluding issue isn't a strong memory for me. I think it even took me a while to catch up with the last few issues. My sense is that it wasn't as big a deal in comics circles as Sim's prominence as a figure in the 1980s and into 1990s might have led us to believe it would be at one time.

The essay starts a bit dicily in that it tries to make a point about the book's nature by strongly asserting a falsehood, which is repeated as gospel near the conclusion. I'm afraid there are people that have read the entirety of Cerebus that think it's not a great work. That said, much of Hickey's analysis of why readers may not be accessing the work now seems reasonably level-headed and measured; he's forthright on the flamboyant beliefs that reflect Sim's not-well mind, for instance. I did have the sense while reading those reasons that they were being presented as stand-alone, interfering factors rather than as issues and concerns that also had an effect on the quality of the work, but maybe that's just my own take surfacing. Still, it's nice to be reminded of Sim's publishing achievement a decade ago, and Cerebus remains an interesting work about which to write.